The tremendous growth of the number of users accessing the Internet has resulted in an increase in the amount of information published on the World Wide Web. News, weather, and e-commerce, even entire novels are available for downloading over the Internet.
Content prepared for subscription delivery is typically periodical. In other words, the information is delivered only within certain “dated content” constraints. The recipient typically retrieves this content from a fixed Uniform Resource Locator (URL). In order to keep the information current, the publisher has to continually monitor the content during the delivery window. As used herein, the term “publisher” is used to mean the entity that makes content or information generally available to multiple persons, and can include an author of the content.
The timing requirements of this method of electronic publishing put significant demands on the publisher. The publisher must have the content ready before its window of availability. Additionally, the customer is forced to accept delivery of each issue during that window of time. For example, if CNN's Web site runs a series on the space program, each edition of the series must be ready prior to being posted and the customer has a limited time in which to read it before it is replaced with the next in the series.
An additional problem faced by electronic publishers is that many publications are sequential in nature but do not require delivery during a specific time window. For example, multi-step tutorials or the chapters of a novel should be read in a sequential order but don't necessarily require that they be published within any predetermined time.
A problem faced by electronic publishing users is that every person has a different schedule when it comes to reading for pleasure. One reader may enjoy and have the time for reading daily while another reader may only have time to read a novel on a weekly basis. Current publishing and delivery systems cannot accommodate the delivery preferences of both types of readers subscribing to the same content. There is a resulting unforeseen need to provide electronic publishing of content having a sequential nature in a manner that allows a variable schedule delivery satisfactory to the consumer but without violating constraints placed on the sequentiality or timing of the content by the publisher or author for artistic, economic, or other reasons